City Life Magazine 14 | Page 48

48 CITY LIFE MAGAZINE N.14 Una Smart Grid per la città di Roma Gianluca Fulli* Gianluca Flego* Alessandro Setti* L A Smart Grid for the city of Rome e Smart Grid rappresentano un elemento cardine per lo sviluppo delle Smart City e promettono di cambiare drasticamente la maniera in cui l’energia elettrica viene generata, scambiata e commercializzata. Ormai da tempo, il Joint Research Centre (JRC) della Commissione Europea osserva, simula e valuta gli sviluppi delle Smart Grids in Europa con nuove metodologie, software integrati e laboratori dedicati. Come riportato in un precedente lavoro del JRC (“Smart Grids Project Outlook 2014”, www.ses. jrc.ec.europa.eu/smart-grids-observatory), gli investimenti in Smart Grid sono molto aumentati negli ultimi dieci anni, superando i 3 miliardi di euro sul solo territorio europeo con oltre 450 progetti tra ricerca, sviluppo, dimostrazione e diffusione. Tuttavia, alcune questioni fondamentali restano irrisolte: vale la pena di investire in Smart Grids? Esiste un business case per sviluppare le soluzioni Smart Grid (testate a livello locale) in città più ampie? Quanto beneficerebbero i cittadini da tale innovazione? Coerentemente con la propria missione di sostegno scientifico per le decisioni politiche, * S mart grids represent a key element in the development of Smart Cities and promise to drastically change the way electricity is generated, e xchanged and traded. The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has for long observed, simulated and evaluated the developments of smart grids in Europe with new methodologies, embedded software e dedicated laboratories. As reported in a previous work from the JRC “Smart Grids Project Outlook 2014” (http://ses.jrc.ec.europa.eu/smart-gridsobservatory), investments in Smart Grids have increased much in the last 10 years, exceeding €3 billion in Europe alone with over 450 projects among research, development, demonstration and diffusion. However, key questions remain to be answered: is investing in Smart Grids worth the cost? Is there a business case for scaling up locally tested Smart Grid solutions to wider cities? To what extent can citizens benefit from such innovation? Consistent with its mission of providing science-based support to policy makers, the JRC has developed a reference methodology Joint Research Centre, Institute for Energy and Transport, European Commission